They even gas us. Johanna and I are the only ones who get our masks on in time. The rest of our squad gets knocked out for ten minutes. And the supposedly harmless gas I took a few lungfuls of gives me a wicked headache for the rest of the day.

Nothing that knocks you out is harmless.  If something renders you unconscious, then it does so by messing with your brain until it stops working.  The line between ‘messed with enough to be unconcious’ and ‘messed with enough for brain damage’ is incredibly fine, it’s different for every person, and it has a million and two variables, which is why anesthesiologists get paid so well. In order to knock out a whole squad, you’d have to use enough to knock out the most resistant person, which means that the least resistant person (getting the same amount) is going to have a very, very bad day.

On the one hand, these people have future-tech, so maybe they’ve found a way around this.  On the other hand, knock-out-gas is misused so much in fiction, even stuff that’s not supposed to be sci-fi, that I felt like pointing this out anyway.

I went through a gas chamber in basic training.  They used tear gas, which will still make you unhappy, but which at least doesn’t cause damage.  If you’re going to have a gassed-for-training scene, why not just keep using that?

Other than that, though, I like their little fake city block.  We use stuff like that all the time, though usually we’re jerry-rigging something for it.  We’ll lay ribbons or tape down to simulate walls in a house or use abandoned buildings to practice.  Only occasionally do we get purpose-built facilities. 

Cressida and her crew tape Johanna and me on the firing range. I know Gale and Finnick are being filmed as well. It’s part of a new propos series to show the rebels preparing for the Capitol invasion.

Who are you showing this to?  The district people who are already on your side, or the capitol people who are probably salivating at the idea of getting forewarning on your tactics?  \~/

Then Peeta starts showing up for our morning workouts. The manacles are off, but he’s still constantly accompanied by a pair of guards.

You’re in a resource-conscious society that’s also in the middle of a war that’s also preparing for a major assault that’s also lost a lot of people in previous assaults.  Why the fuck are two able bodies being spent on Peeta instead of on something actually useful?

I anxiously watch the preparations for the invasions. See equipment and provisions readied, divisions assembled.

What was going on before now? You guys are 90% if the way through a war already so why are all the descriptions going on as if they’re just now gearing up?  Just because this is the first time Katniss has paid attention to anything doesn’t mean this is the first time such things are happening.  ‘Divisions assembled,’ what, like they were just lolygaging around at home during all the fighting thus far?

You can tell when someone’s received orders because they’re given a very short haircut, the mark of a person going into battle.

So in this militaristic society, people got to have whatever haircut they want?

One boy says, under his breath, that he’s heard [the test is] designed to target each individual’s weaknesses.

Bullshit.

First of all, the text says you have to go through this combat test alone, which is, again, bullshit because no one does combat alone.  Combat is a group exercise.  Combat is not a solo hero running in to kick ass alone.  Combat not the Lone Ranger or John Wayne or James Bond running around in a blaze of cinematic glory.  COMBAT IS BY DESIGN AND BY DEFINITION A GROUP EFFORT.  But this fucking book has to go and frame everything as revolving around the main character, and how can Katniss show off if she’s being part of a team?

Second, no one should have the time or the resources to custom-design a challenge for each individual based on their weaknesses.

Third, you don’t have to be perfect to go into combat.  In fact, that’s the point of the teamwork aspect.  When you have a team, if you’re weak at one thing but your buddy is strong at it, then he can cover for you.  I can’t kick in a door to save my life (and I’ve tried, it was disastrously funny) but I don’t need to because I never go out alone and as long as there’s a big, hulky door-kicker around, we still get inside the building.  I can handle my job, I can do it well, and I can be an asset to my team without needing to root out my own personal weaknesses.

If any weaknesses are being tested, they should be ones specific to combat situations.  Obviously if you can’t handle stress, loud noises, or threats, that’s not something another person can make up for.  You can’t drag someone kicking and screaming into combat and call that effective.  But if there’s a baseline set of skills and abilities everyone needs, then test everyone for that baseline.

I find a quiet spot and try to assess what they might be. The length of the list depresses me. Lack of physical brute force. A bare minimum of training. And somehow my standout status as the Mockingjay doesn’t seem to be an advantage in a situation where they’re trying to get us to blend into a pack.

Wow, you’re depressed by three things?

Also, in a situation where you have guns and bombs, you don’t need ‘brute force.’

And suddenly, I realize what the military will think my biggest weakness is. […] I cannot take orders.

Yes, that is a huge failing.  It’s also why she shouldn’t be here at all.

See, passing this test here doesn’t mean she’s learned better.  It’s even there in that statement.  They “think” it’s her weakness.  Katniss, even after this test, doesn’t realize that following orders when you’re a foot soldier has a point.  She never stops to wonder if her cavalier attitude is doing more harm than good.  No.  She just plays the part of a good solider so she can do what she “knows” is the “right” thing on her own.

And that’s why this is a terrible thing to test.  This is something that should come about as part of training, as part of an ongoing assessment.  When it’s a single point in a test, then this happens, because of course no one is going to act up in a test.  They know they’re being watched!

“You’re with me. It’s a special unit of sharpshooters. Join your squad.”

Katniss has to go through training, but a mere three weeks and one cheated test later and she’s back to having special status.  Consequences?  What consequences?

“Each light is called a pod. It represents a different obstacle, the nature of which could be anything from a bomb to a band of mutts.

And then we get to this.

Why have such a variety of traps?  The only reason to do that is if there’s a variety of counter-attacks.  If Counter A will defeat Pod A but not Pod B, and Counter B will defeat Pod B but not Pod A, then it makes sense.  You have a variety in the hopes that a few of them will survive the counter-attacks and reach target.

But there isn’t any indication of this.  All the pods are given the same treatment: bullets and lots of them.  And all the pods succumb to this.  So why do this?  Just take your most effective trap and use that. \~/

Also, hey rebels: BOMBS.  Bomb the fuck out of those pods from way up in the air and call it a day. Unless there’s infrastructure to save, you don’t need to bother with anything else.  And there is no infrastructure, because the capitol so helpfully moved all of that to the districts for you. \~/

Because only a victor would see what I see so immediately. The arena. Laced with pods controlled by Gamemakers.

God, will you ever get over comparing everything to those stupid games?  Because, frankly, this is nothing like either of the previous arenas we’ve seen, which have been designed for entertainment and not for defense.

all the while telling myself to hang on until I can get to the woods and scream. Or curse. Or cry. Or maybe all three at once.

The realization that there will be traps is what gets to Katniss.  Not the idea of killing people (she had to fake-shoot people in training), but just the mere fact that there are traps.  Before realizing that traps are used for more than just one event, she’s totally cool with all of this.

Hey, speaking of training, why wasn’t this included?  Did the author just think of it just now and felt that going back and editing was for sissies?  We see later that clearing traps is a major part of the operation (because…I don’t know, maybe they used up all their bombs?) so why weren’t they trained on it?

“What will I tell Annie?” he says under his breath.

“Nothing,” I answer. “That’s what my mother and sister will be hearing from me.” Bad enough that we know we’re heading back into a fully equipped arena.

Depends.  Does she already know you’re going into combat?  Because, frankly, if you’re worried about stressing her out, I think snipers are still going to do that plenty.

(For the record, I’m more or less okay with not telling loved ones stuff.  The whole time I was in Iraq, I had all my relatives convinced that my job was purely office-based and that I never went on missions.  They worried plenty with just that.)

…hey, wait, where did Finnick come from?

We heard about Katniss and Johanna making the deal to go through training, but Finnick just sort of showed up at the end there with nary a word about anything he did in the interim.  And wasn’t he broken to psychological bits just a few chapters ago?  I know the “Power of Love” “healed” him, but if anything, that would be an argument in favor of not letting him go into combat.  Who knows what he’ll do when separated from his “love.”

“It was while she was on the Block. They try to ferret out a soldier’s potential weaknesses. So they flooded the street,” says Haymitch.

Unless they foresee a likely chance of floods while in the capitol, this is just cruel and wasteful.  I mean, I’m afraid of suffocation of every sort, drowning, outer space, and harmless grasshoppers, but I don’t have to fight any of those things.  The only time I had to face any of those, I had to jump into a pool with my whole uniform on and swim out, and that wasn’t until I got to Hawaii since there’s a lot of water around Hawaii so it had become relevant.  (Swimming with boots is ridonculously hard.)

So now they’ve lost an able body and put Johanna back in her recover all for no reason.  At the very least tell her about it and give her a chance to bow out.  Then you’ve only fucked up one way, not every way.

“He wants as many victors as possible for the cameras to follow in the Capitol. Thinks it makes for better television.” […] “As many young and attractive victors as possible,” Haymitch corrects himself.

Right, and that’s why John Wayne was the greatest action star ever.

h

Attractive he may be, but I don’t think anyone would call him a young-sexy-golden-boy.

…okay, fine, during his heyday he wasn’t young.

There was no real point to that second photo except wanting to share it.

Still, the way this book acts as if only the young and conventionally attractive are worth our time…  Notice that, while the book blames ‘television’ for this, it still goes right on ahead and excludes Haymich and any other, older victors anyway.  How convenient that someone else gets to take the blame, but the book gets to focus on the young and the sexy anyway.

“I made it for you. Something to put in your drawer.” I place it in her hands. “Smell it.”

She lifts the bundle to her nose and takes a tentative sniff. “Smells like home.” Tears flood her eyes.

Hey, look, she finally did something nice. 

The trident Beetee designed for Finnick has a lot of special features, but the most remarkable is that he can throw it, press a button on a metal cuff on his wrist, and return it to his hand without chasing it down.

You can make a trident fly, but you can’t design high-altitude bombers?

This trident is even more ridiculous than Katniss’s bow.  The amount of hoops to jump through to make it a viable weapon means they would have been so much better off just giving him a gun.  At this point, it’s not even a trident anymore, it’s contrivance and magic in a trident shape.

looks kind of sluggish but can hit things the rest of us can’t even see without a scope.

What is that ‘but’ doing in there?  Jittery people don’t tend to do well with aiming.

There’s a pair of sisters […]Two older guys

Plus a female second-in-command, Gale, Katniss, Finnick, and Boggs.  4 gals, 5 guys, finally, we’re approaching something close to gender parity.

“We have numerous sharpshooters, but rather a dearth of camera crews. Therefore, we’ve handpicked the eight of you to be what we call our ‘Star Squad.’ You will be the on-screen faces of the invasion.”

“We need someone to act in front of a camera, so instead of picking our best actors, we’re picking our best shooters.”  Yeah, sure, that makes a ton of sense.  \~/

And another one for continuing on this ridiculous propaganda zombie of a plot. \~/

A hovercraft takes us to, of all places, 12, where a makeshift transportation area has been set up outside the fire zone.

Right, because when you’re going to Colorado and you have control of the whole country and all the airspace, the logical place to board a train is in the Appalachians.

a cargo car packed to the limit with soldiers in their dark gray uniforms, sleeping with their heads on their packs.

After a couple of days’ travel,

make the rest of the six-hour trek on foot, taking care to step only on a glowing green paint line that marks safe passage to the air above.

Squad 451 is assigned a spot to pitch its tents.

Book, did you just make a bet with yourself to see how many war-movie scenes you could squeeze in?  Because none of this makes sense in context.  You don’t need to spend days on a train when you can fly.  You should have cleared that tunnel because you can’t carry in all of your army supplies.  Why the fuck do you have tents in a city?

Between us lie the booby-trapped streets, empty and inviting. Each one will need to be swept of pods before we can advance.

NO, EACH ONES NEEDS TO BE BOMBED THERE’S NOT EVEN ANY CIVILIANS THERE TO JUSTIFY THIS BULLSHIT BOMBS BOMBS BOMBS BOMBS THE ONLY THING YOU ARE SAVING RIGHT NOW IS FUCKING APARTMENT BUILDINGS ARE YOU JUST FUCKING HIGH? \~/

Our own hoverplanes were grounded after the Capitol’s antiaircraft missiles decimated the first few waves.

What, you don’t have artillery?  Did that go the way of your high-altitude bombers as well?

The rebels want the Capitol, just as the Capitol wanted 13.

Because… … … … Reasons?

They tell us we’re part of the disinformation team. If the rebels only shoot Plutarch’s pods, it will take the Capitol about two minutes to realize we have the holograph. So there’s a lot of time spent shattering things that don’t matter, to throw them off the scent.

Fuck me, so you took your best shooters and then told them to shoot badly?

The only way these fucking fuckity fuck fucks won any fucking thing is because the fucking capitol is fucking dumber than fucking bricks and just fuck everyone, every last fucking one of these fuckers.

Also, there’s only two options here: 1) everyone is firing at everything, in which case why do they even need to know where the traps are? 2) the other squads are targeting the traps, and if the capitol has any oversight over their own equipment, they’ll know that what they see on TV from the rebels and what’s going on in reality are two different things.

But if Coin sent Peeta here, she’s decided something else as well. That I’m of more use to her dead than alive.

If she wants you dead, Peeta’s nothing more than a Hail Mary shot.  After all, the move can be traced directly back to her, so it’s hardly covert, and also everyone knows he wants to kill Katniss so they’re going to be on high alert and not give him any chance.  She’d be better off putting on a different wig and a fake nose and coming to do the job herself.

Also, yes, Katniss is more use dead than alive.  In fact, she’s quite a lot of trouble alive.  She makes no secret of her distain for the leaders of the resistance and (somewhat randomly, but still) actively tries to subvert them.  If the text is to be believed, she has the ear and the regard of the entire country, but she consistently fails to use that in any positive way and instead persists in bumbling around with her thumb up her ass.  All she ever shows interest in is preening and shooting things.  For all Coin knows, after this war is over, Katniss will go right on shooting folks just for the fun of it and then demand that everyone elect her president, which they would do, because as we’ve covered, this is a country of lead-eating children.